Aloha Stadium redevelopment suffers from muddled leadership

Oct. 2—There has been no individual driving force for the $400 million project that's been in the works for over a decade as the anchor to an envisioned New Aloha Stadium Entertainment District.

Neal Blaisdell, Stan Sheriff and John Burns were three late local government officials who played instrumental roles in developing marquee sports facilities on Oahu.

A multipurpose center in Kakaako is named after the former Honolulu mayor. An arena at the University of Hawaii in Manoa is named after the former UH athletic director. And a stadium in Halawa received backing to be named for the former governor before it was branded Aloha Stadium.

Yet, in the languishing effort to replace Aloha Stadium—Hawaii's largest sports and entertainment venue—there's been no individual driving force for the estimated $400 million project that's been in the works for over a decade as the anchor to an envisioned New Aloha Stadium Entertainment District to include retail, restaurants, a hotel, housing and more all adjacent to a city rail station and delivered in partnership with private developers.

NASED has lacked a leader with a lot of pull.

"You need a conductor there really driving the deal, " said Stanford Carr, a local developer and partner in one of two private development teams that in January qualified to bid on redeveloping 73 acres surrounding the site for a new, roughly 35, 000-seat stadium. "There was no real champion doing it."

In San Diego the new 35, 000-seat Snapdragon Stadium, which includes planned ancillary real estate development connected to rail, opened in September as a result of an effort led by San Diego State University's athletic director, John David Wicker.

In Halawa a cast of players has been trying to replace the 47-year-old stadium nicknamed the Rust Palace, which was condemned for spectator use nearly two years ago and now has a forecast delivery of 2027 instead of 2023.—RELATED :

This cast has been a sometimes muddy blend of state lawmakers, the Stadium Authority, the Department of Accounting and General Services, the Hawaii Community Development Authority and paid consultants, including design and planning firm Crawford Architects, project management firm WT Partnership, law firm O'Melveny & Myers LLP and public relations firm CommPac.

In June the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism got added to the mix.

The result has been a project beset by numerous delays, back-steps and uncertainty despite a lot of good-faith effort and close to $25 million in taxpayer money spent to date.

On Sept. 21, Gov. David Ige's chief of staff, Linda Chu Takayama, told DAGS not to proceed with its repeatedly postponed issuance of two requests for proposals seeking bids from developers to replace the stadium and create a new surrounding mixed-use community.

"It's just drawn out, " Carr said before Takayama's directive became public. "Too many cooks in the kitchen."

Early quarterback (s )

An early integral NASED player was Scott Chan, who became Aloha Stadium's manager in 2007. He was instrumental in facilitating early work that included helping convince lawmakers that replacement was better than refurbishment, and lifting federal and city land-deed restrictions to permit ancillary development on the 98-acre site owned by the state.

Chan, however, wasn't among NASED's decision-makers. In 2021 he retired and wished the project success without his continued drive.

Hawaii's 76-member Legislature has wielded a lot of sometimes unstable power as NASED's purse-string holder.

Lawmakers appropriated $350 million in funding three years ago, cut it roughly in half in 2021, then restored the amount this year plus an extra $50 million to operate a new stadium.

The Legislature also has determined which agencies are involved, and over several years has switched up or tried to switch up such roles.

In 2017, lawmakers rejected a bill from Ige's administration to have the Stadium Authority, which oversees stadium management, be NASED's lead redevelopment agency.

DAGS, which typically handles procurement for state public works projects, initially received the job, though some lawmakers expressed skepticism about the agency's capabilities.

Members of two Senate committees in 2019 asked the then-new head of DAGS, Curt Otaguro, not to let NASED languish like some other DAGS projects. "A lot of those projects get stuck on someone's desk at DAGS, so that's what I'm trying to figure out, " Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz, Ways and Means Committee chair, said at the briefing.

Otaguro, a former bank executive, three days earlier had replaced Rod Becker shortly after Becker stopped Stadium Authority members from going to see some mainland mixed-use communities around stadiums because the trip's purpose conflicted with the agency's duties defined in state statute.

Agency shuffle Later in 2019 the Legislature reassigned NASED's lead agency role to HCDA, which guides redevelopment in Kakaako and Kalaeloa. Then, in 2020, lawmakers tried to reverse this move but failed to do so until 2021, when HCDA was made more of a helper to DAGS.

Otaguro continues to head DAGS, but in August was appointed to a state Department of Education administrative job.

NASED's project leader at DAGS has been Chris Kinimaka, the agency's public works administrator.

Kinimaka, like Otaguro, said she was surprised by Ige calling off further DAGS work to seek developer proposals.

"It was a lightning bolt out of the blue, " she said recently.

Ige said his move stems from the Legislature setting out yet another new path for NASED under a bill he signed in June.

"The Legislature has changed direction on this three or four times, which is why the project has been delayed so often, " Ige said two weeks ago on the Honolulu Star-Advertiser's "Spotlight Hawaii " livestream program.

Senate Bill 3334 switched the Stadium Authority's administrative attachment to DBEDT from DAGS as part of a goal to centralize state land development expertise within DBEDT and improve efficiency of such work.

On Thursday, DBEDT Director Mike McCartney, a former lawmaker, told Stadium Authority members that the Legislature in June prohibited the private-­public partnership arrangement in its budget bill allocating the $350 million to DBEDT.

A deputy attorney general representing the Stadium Authority, Randall Nishiyama, disagreed with McCartney's position and said the method of redevelopment is up to the authority, where DBEDT's director became one of eight voting board members in June under the new law.

One state entity giving input on NASED without any control has been UH. Aloha Stadium was built in 1975 in part to elevate the university's then-relatively minor football program, and UH has since been a primary stadium user and revenue generator.

David Matlin, the university's athletic director, said UH leadership has been excited about a new stadium in Halawa during work on NASED, and regards it as "critical " for the football program.

But the university lacks a decision-making role as a nonvoting Stadium Authority member.

"Our role is really defined not by us, " Matlin said.

After the Stadium Authority shuttered the stands at the end of 2020, UH spent $8 million to add seating and other features to one of its practice fields in Manoa in 2021, and plans to invest another $30 million in a capital improvement project that includes expanding seating to nearly 17, 000 from 9, 346 before 2023's football season starts.

Matlin said UH still supports rebuilding Aloha Stadium.

"What we have right here (in Manoa ) is not the long-term solution, " he said. "I think it's a bridge to the new stadium."

Chief executive Former Gov. Neil Abercrombie, who opposes the NASED plan and wants to see the stadium site used predominantly for affordable housing, said Thursday that the endeavor has reached an "absurd " level.

"Things are falling apart, " he said. "It's embarrassing."

Former Honolulu Mayor and state lawmaker Kirk Caldwell said NASED lacks a commanding official, but also noted that government executives have limited power.

Caldwell compared NASED to the city's troubled rail project, which he inherited as a responsibility but had little authority over its funding or who ran an independent agency set up to develop rail.

"There was no clear line of authority, " said Caldwell, who supports rail and NASED. "This split between authority and responsibility is fraught with problems."

Ige, who has been governor for eight years spanning most of NASED's planning, expressed support for a new stadium in Halawa after cutting off work by DAGS, saying the project is important for UH and the community.

The governor, however, hasn't always been a steady proponent of the project, which he strongly endorsed in 2019 when funding was first appropriated by lawmakers.

In early 2021, Ige suggested that it might be wiser to fix up Aloha Stadium instead of replacing it.

"There are a lot of things that we could do within the existing facility that would make it usable for the university for many, many years to come, " he said in 2021. "And that would, in the overall scheme of things, cost us less in construction funds than we are currently talking about."

Ige, whose term ends in December, hasn't yet disclosed specifics of a new idea to deliver for a new Aloha Stadium under DBEDT.